Butte County Official Declines Justice Department Demand to Set Aside 47 Ballots

Keaton Denlay, the county clerk-recorder and registrar of voters for Butte County, California, has declined to act on a list of names that the U.S. Justice Department sent to his office. The department's paperwork claimed the list named 47 "likely" noncitizens who were unlawfully registered to vote, according to The Guardian.

The materials were dropped off on Friday, October 23, 2026, at about 3:30 in the afternoon, by a person who identified as a Department of Homeland Security agent. The package held a demand letter, two declarations (sworn written statements), and a two-page list of names. The letter misspelled Denlay's surname as "Danlay."

The letter asked the county to set aside, meaning hold back from being counted, the ballots of the 47 people on the list. It also asked Denlay's office to give federal prosecutors more information about those individuals, including Social Security numbers. The letter warned that people who knowingly counted ballots cast by people identified as noncitizens risk becoming "aiders and abettors," or accomplices, to a federal crime.

Denlay has described the list as a poorly formatted printout of an Excel spreadsheet, with missing and jumbled information and many errors. He said he would not act on it. He also said that federal agents had threatened to prosecute him criminally, a claim The Guardian reported on Wednesday. In an interview published the same day, he said he was not losing sleep over the threats and would keep doing his job to support Butte County voters.

Butte County lies north of Sacramento and has about 209,000 residents. Its case is one part of a wider effort. The Justice Department has alleged that 20,000 voters in California are likely noncitizens and has sued to stop those ballots from being counted. It has also sent letters directly to county registrars across the state, demanding that they set aside certain ballots and respond within 48 hours.

A separate report by the Mercury News, published on October 27, said most of the people on the Butte County list did not have a ballot in the election in any case.